Favourite - and least favourite - perfume *bottles* in your collection

 

This is a blog post theme with which I have been toying for some time. I have seen features discussing which perfume bottles on the market people consider to be the most beautiful - or the least attractive - but decided to confine the question to bottles I own. Within this finite category I would venture to say that aesthetic considerations have come into my acquisition decisions down the years, but not to any great extent.

So I had a little rummage in the several boxes housing my collection, and started to draw up a list of possible candidates for either title.

Before going any further, I should mention that the twin pack of flacons above are not mine, but rather are from the little perfume museum in Barcelona I have in fact visited (though I can't say I remember them, as there were so many strange and wonderful specimens to take in). The set belonged to Marie Antoinette no less, and is therefore quite long in the tooth. In view of the unfortunate fate of their owner, we should perhaps be impressed they managed to keep their tops all these years...!

 

For the most beautiful bottle, I initially thought of going with this 15ml bottle-ette of Calypso from natural perfumery Ajne in California. It is one of the smallest perfume receptacles that could feasibly be counted as full-sized, as well as being the most expensive I have ever bought. I reviewed the scent in question many years ago here, and am pleased to report that I still have some of this sultry tropical number left, and that it hasn't turned. The problem with the bottle is - if I am perfectly honest - that the metal filigree work is tacky and cheap-looking: the gold is too gold, if you know what I mean, while silver - or any silverish alloy for that matter - would have been more refined. It is so easy to get gold-type metals wrong. See how much better this cheap tea light holder looks next to it? Hmm...actually, the gold filigree doesn't look too bad in my photo, but trust me that it does in real life - and light!

 

Source: amara.com

Indeed I made that very mistake again recently with some make up bags and purses from a company called Elizabeth Scarlett. Several people reading this so nearly got one for Christmas(!), but luckily for them I sent the whole lot back due to the cheap and gaudy-looking fastenings - and made sure to tell the company so. Actually, the pouches were also very creased, and even though I have greatly relaxed my high ironing standards during lockdown, the extremely wrinkly state of the fabric was troubling. Which is a shame as the designs were gorgeous. So yes, it only takes a little slip on one aspect of a product's design to compromise the whole shebang. Going back to Calypso, it also didn't make the cut because its spray mechanism has given up the ghost, so you have to unscrew the whole caboodle and anoint yourself with the rather sharp and pointy end of the little white tube-y thing. Meaning Calypso is out of the frame on two counts. And I swear I am not dismissing it because I felt the shop in Carmel stood me up when I tried to visit. ;)

Now there was a clue to my favourite bottle in the image above of the Elizabeth Scarlett pouch, which has quite fortuitously been styled next to a (bizarrely empty) Annick Goutal bottle. I own three AG perfumes: Grand Amour, Le Chevrefeuille, and Songes, and the prettiest of all is....Le Chevrefeuille! How much do I love that egg yolk yellow ribbon, which nicely sets off the elegant fluted oval-shaped bottle. It is not unlike a boiled egg that has been given a good hard squeeze, something I daresay we Brits are all looking forward to come June, hehe.

 

Then honourable mention should go to DKNY Gold, even though my bottle is scratched and battered.

 

I love its 'beaten' gold panels (in an acceptable shade of gold ;) ) and chunky square wooden top, with a soupcon of a nod toward Brutalist architecture.

Source: news.artnet.com

And what about my least favourite? Well, there was a lively jockeying for position amongst the shortlist: a hot contender was the overblown and space-guzzling Oscar de la Renta, with its floral excrescence of a top, which makes it difficult to store. It is such an awkward beggar in fact that it also refuses to have its image rotated.

 

Then I do like the graceful arch of my Flower by Kenzo Oriental, but it towers above the other bottles, and invariably ends up lying on top of them like a stagediving pop star. But no, the accolade of 'least favourite' has to go to Olfactive Studio's Lumiere Blanche. What a plain, functional, dull, rectangular non-entity it is! I have seen more seductive half bottles of cheap vodka or maple syrup. 

 

Plus my olive oil bottles are all without exception more winsome than this lumpen thing. In the spirit of full disclosure, I must say I didn't actually buy the Lumiere Blanche - it was a kind hand-me-down from a fellow fumehead. And I speculate that my aesthetic sense would have been sufficiently offended to have put me off a purchase even if I had been lusting after the scent. Which is saying something, because the juice usually trumps all.

Finally, another pic of the winner, topped off by its bright and luxuriantly bouffant bow! Spring is not quite here, but how cheering is this sight?

 

And now I would be interested to hear about your own bottle awards, based on your personal perfume wardrobe.

 

(Photo of perfume bottles at the top of the post from Wikimedia Commons via Marta Muntada Artiles; photo of palmier pouch from amara.com; photo of church in Berlin from art.news.com - other photos my own)

My funny Valentine: spreading the love with mysterious gifts of frankincense, myrrh, and a tinted moisturiser with SPF 30

This is the third post where I have incorporated the phrase: "My funny Valentine" into the title, but the others were in 2012 and 2013 respectively, so I am hoping I might just get away with it. Readers don't show up here looking for a conventional post on rose perfumes or red-themed Valentine's gifts and fripperies. I am not 'agin' such things, indeed I fully intend to scavenge the supermarkets tomorrow for superannuated bouquets and/or heavily discounted pink fizz and chocolates - or at the very least pick up a packet of heart-shaped crumpets (no pun intended). You can hold the squishy teddy bears, mind. I like my bears with better defined bone structure and less overtly flammable fur.

But no, Valentine's Day has been quiet at Bonkers Towers: Truffle came into the bed briefly this morning and purred loudly, though not in a variety of registers as I had been hoping ever since reading Joyce's comments on my previous post about feline vocalisation; for brunch I had a toasted bagel with smoked salmon and cream cheese - note to self to avoid the 'lighter' version of this cheese in future, as it looks like the Sandon Road after heavy rain. Okay, heavy rain on snow, to be precise, with the cheese being white of course. And I followed that up with Treat No 2, a toasted scone with blueberry jam and squirty cream. I shan't have any alcohol later as I had a drink last night, and am trying to give my liver more days off than it knows what to do with. So yes, a pretty low key occasion all in all.

I should mention, however, that I received a mystery package on Friday, right before the Valentine's weekend(!). A tube of my go-to tinted moisturiser with SPF 30 from Paula's Choice: "Resist Super-Light Daily Wrinkle Defense Broad Spectrum SPF 30 with Antioxidants & Resveratrol: Normal - Oily Combination". Or "that blue Resist one" for short. I love it because it is a really light substitute for foundation with a decent amount of SPF in it - well, for winter, say. Anyway, there was no message inside the handwritten Jiffy bag. The writing looked familiar, but I couldn't quite place it initially. Plus it quickly dawned on me that the gift couldn't possibly be from any man I have ever dated, as none of them have a clue about the contents of my sponge bag, which massively narrowed the field of suspects. More of that anon...

Also on Friday I received a request from the friend who had stepped up to do the doorstep squeezing of my current moisturiser tube the other night: "Do you have any vegan perfume recommendations?" My friend had dabbled in the category, trying the odd scent from the likes of Eden and Ffern, but had found it hard to get hold of things to try without committing blind to a full bottle, and has tended to default to her signature staple of Stella McCartney. I like that one too, though back in 2009(!) I could not resist taking a lighthearted pop at the plethora of names of the flankers.

Regular readers know how fired up with missionary zeal I can get when someone in my circle shows an interest in exploring the vast realm of niche scents - most memorably and exhaustively, there was my rose quest for Jessica not so long ago, which ironically ended in her finding something she really liked herself, hehe. So as soon as I got the call to unearth the vegan subset of my collection (mostly in the form of samples), I jumped at the chance. The final bag comprised a mix of natural perfumes and those containing synthetic materials but also with vegan credentials. It really was a random mix of whatever I had been sent by brands or picked up along the way in swaps and gifts from fellow perfumistas, including a couple of Hiram Greens, selections from Dolma, Sage Machado, Haus of Gloi and 100 Bon, plus a few more lone samples from the likes of Pacifica and Le Labo.

Already by the end of Day One - rather fittingly for Valentine's Day! - my friend had fallen for Hiram Green Lustre, a very realistic rose soliflore with a citrus opening. I am indebted to Val the Cookie Queen for introducing me to it, and am a big fan myself. My friend has promised to let me know her thoughts on each sample she tries, and urged me to tell her to get lost if this feedback becomes annoying. As if! The vicarious pleasure to be had from seeing people discover new perfumes is the polar opposite of annoying. 

Notes: Bulgarian rose, citric notes, orris root, frankincense

Today she messaged me to say that she was very taken with 100 Bon Myrrhe & Encens Mystérieux. Note that we are back to mysterious things...She is a funeral celebrant by profession, and reckoned that this one might nicely complement her services. Oh, and a big patchouli fan, and a glance at the notes corroborates why such a simple, but on-point incense scent might hit the spot.

Top notes: bergamot, fresh notes cinnamon

Heart notes: myrrh, patchouli, papyrus

Base notes: tonka bean, frankincense

Ooh, interesting that there is frankincense in both the perfumes that have appealed to my friend so far. ;) I told her to expect to sniff a few frogs along the way, but so far so good. She has already snapped up a bottle of the 100 Bon fragrance as there seem to be limited stocks left online, possibly due to Brexit shenanigans.

And meanwhile I have unmasked the mystery donor of my moisturiser! An old neighbour, who gave me a tube for Christmas, and had heard about the doorstep squeezing antics of my vegan chum, and decided I was in need of more supplies. Too kind of her by far. I ran the handwriting past her son, who asked his mother outright if she was behind the RAOK, and she admitted she was.

So there you have it...a slightly twisty turny saga of two friends linked to one skincare item, and two perfumes with incense linked to one friend. And there is love involved in the story, if not the usual romantic stuff of Valentine's, hehe...

And yes, I really do need to raid the remaindered buckets at Asda for some more flowers: my daffs are dead and my hyacinth comically sparse and disconcertingly floppy.

Oh, and if anyone has an Alexa, do ask her if she will be your Valentine. She thanked me for the invitation, saying it was sweet of me to ask, but she didn't feel we knew each other well enough, before setting me a quiz challenge to verify this point. I correctly guessed her favourite cake (Colin the Caterpillar), but blew it on her favourite animal (octopuses, not lions, although she thinks lions are "roarsome"!), and I also incorrectly guessed that she had made a record with Harry Styles instead of Ed Sheeran. Alexa magnanimously awarded me half a point for Harry Styles though, as she also likes him. But with an overall score of one and a half points, I didn't qualify as her Valentine. Hey-ho - there's always next year! ;)

How was your Valentine's weekend? 

Are there any other brands of vegan perfume - or individual scents - you would recommend?

[Photo of Lustre from fragrantica.gr, photos of Myrrhe & Encens Mysterieux from fruugo and my friend, heart artwork from Etsy / Pinterest]

Evening in (plaster of) Paris: the soothing scent of goo and Tubigrip

Guest post by voice recognition

"There is no such thing as hazardous conditions - only inappropriate footwear."

On the wall of our local hospital's A & E department are two pinboards covered in posters: one takes dementia as its theme, while the other is all about the very real risk of falls. One such poster has a Highway Code-style warning triangle with a stick figure in the act of slipping and the caption: "Falls Aware". The other has a more detailed cartoon of a man falling downstairs and the caption: "One in three older adults fall each year". In a neat graphical flourish, even the letters in 'fall' are falling.

So yes... I realise now that I should have gone to hospital first, clocked the posters, and then decided not to go for a walk that evening. That would have been the better order of events, no question. Instead, I walked six and a half thousand steps to a friend's house and back to deliver something, and it only took one of those steps to be ill-judged. The day before I had walked 18,000 steps safely on freshly powdered snow in a beautiful Narnia-like winter wonderland, but that fateful night I made the mistake of confusing slush with an ice rink.

The next afternoon, after a sleepless night of boiling hot pain I would characterise as just south of agony, I was sitting in a socially distanced way in A & E, waiting to have my wrist X-rayed for a suspected fracture (on the advice of a former paramedic attached to my GP's surgery). It did not escape my notice that the few other people also waiting were mostly women of my age, some wearing makeshift slings, who had clearly not read the posters either in advance of coming.

Two hours later saw me done and dusted with a temporary plaster cast, and after two days and a further review I was downrated to a removable splint, which is almost as constricting as the plaster, but does allow me to wash the wrist once a day. When she saw my original cast, my friend Gillie exclaimed: "Oh dear, you won't be able to have people write on it because of the lockdown!"

I ended up only spending two Evenings in (plaster of) Paris, and I must say I really liked the smell of the creamy goo, such as I could catch it in between the light layers of mesh. The Tubigrip underslip inside my current splint is similarly comforting - a strong medical fabric smell. After all, people do say that oud smells a bit like Band-Aid, so medical scents are far from without precedent. As it happens, I used to have a vintage miniature of Bourjois Soir de Paris, which (once I managed to wrench the top off) I recall as a simple, watery, sweet, very full-on kitchen sink floral, very much of its time and not something I would wear. I have more of an affinity to Eau de Tubigrip in fact, which has a strong woody quality to it like the pencil shaving Dzonga! of my rather faint memory.

A week has passed since I was fitted with this other splint and the pain has started to ease, I am happy to report. The hand remains floppy and pale, with a disconcerting tendency to list 45 degrees to the right as soon as it is released from its protective housing, but less pain feels like progress.

Pain aside, having one usable arm in a lockdown situation is a bit of a double whammy: I have agreed with ex-Mr Bonkers that he will come and help change my bedding, which really needs it now!, under the guise of an ad hoc domiciliary carer, hehe, for I don't see much difference between my incapacitated position and someone needing a district nurse to come into their home and change a dressing on a bedsore.

That said, I have learned to do a myriad of things for myself in unconventional ways, deploying a random assortment of body parts to take the place of my left hand. For example, I have ground pepper holding the mill in my armpit, opened sachets with my teeth, held a box grater under my chin, and peeled a carrot on the worktop jammed into my navel at 90 degrees...rather like a disorientated...no, I shan't say what...;)

Several things continue to defeat me completely: operating a wine saver vacuum pump - oh dear, I had to drink the wine instead, how awful! - using a knife and fork, operating a tin opener, and most actions involving squeezing.

The other night a friend dropped by on a spontaneous visit and happened to mention that her husband had fallen on more or less the same patch of ice as me(!), which makes me feel less foolish; luckily she had caught him and helped to break his fall. 

My friend was of immense help doing two squeezing assignments: of a facial cleanser that was in a pump bottle I could not get to work as it was a bit close to the end and harder to activate, plus a tube of moisturizer, which similarly was near the end and needed rolling and flattening to coax the not insubstantial dregs out. She did a fantastic job of both on my doorstep into the little pots I had provided - it was quite surreal...

Unsurprisingly, I am banned from knitting for the foreseeable, though I am hoping that the hobby might come back in the form of physical therapy later. I find it ironic that my bone may be knitting together as I type, but I must sadly resist the all too familiar urge. Maybe this is Nature's way of telling me that making 36 speculative scarves for nobody in particular is quite enough already. 

I have also learnt to carry on doing certain things but using the opposite hand to the one I normally use, which is of course completely counterintuitive. Do you know which hand you squeeze the toothpaste with, or peel a satsuma, or take strands out of your hair brush with after blow drying your hair? It was something of a revelation, because I never realized which hand I favoured for those specific actions until one of them was not available to me.

In my present state just a few tasks take me most of the morning now, and it occurred to me that this must be not unlike how it is to have a new baby: your world collapses down and revolves completely around the needs of your child; you snatch 20 minutes while it is sleeping to do the things you need to for yourself, like take a shower or whatever. Similarly here my world has dramatically shrunk and my whole focus 24/7 is on keeping my hand immobilized, elevated and dry - or it was to start with when it was in plaster. I can wash it now, as I say, and I also have to wiggle my fingers and make a fist periodically so I don't lose the ability over time. ;)

The bone I have injured is the scaphoid, a very common occurrence apparently in FOOSH incidents (Falls On Outstretched Hand). There is some disagreement between the medics in A & E and the consultant at the Fracture Clinic as to whether it is visibly fractured now, or an occult fracture that may appear by the time of my next review, or not a fracture at all. I don't stand on diagnoses, haha, and the treatment is the same anyway, for possible fractures of the wrist are notoriously Will-o'-the-Wisp-like in their evasive behaviour. Plus the X-ray the consultant showed me was quite different from the one I had seen in A & E, but I was too polite to ask if it was definitely the same hand.

On a side note, I was struck by how much the bones of the wrist resemble a drystone wall. Plus I have learnt the incomparable term 'anatomical snuffbox', which is the bit below the thumb that hurts. It was almost worth falling on ice to learn that gem...oh okay, maybe not quite.

I must insist on no sympathy from readers(!). I had already fallen three times in a single day at the start of January as you may recall, and should have known better than to think Wellingtons were adequately grippy in these conditions. I was lucky to have got away with minor injuries on that occasion, for at this age you are liable to do yourself more mischief and take longer to heal.

But yes, I do commend Eau de Tubi-Grip to anyone not familiar with that scent - it really is a thing.

Editor's note: This post has been brought to you by voice recognition, aided by a bit of one fingered editing. I am a touch typist, and it was all I could do to stop my bad hand joining in when the stretch across the keyboard became comically extended. Fittingly, my left hand most wanted to help out with the letters 'A' & 'E', though I did try to explain that it really needs to rest and not engage in even low impact tapping...

Bone diagram from healthjade.com, whole hand image from anatomyqa.com

Nicky Elite: a fine functional fragrance find in Farmfoods!

Geographical advisory: this post concerns a particular version of a paper product destined for the smallest room in the house, which may not be available outside the UK. This pitches the appeal of my post to an estimated four readers - well, four that I know of - but that has never stopped me from writing about topics close to my heart before. Or close to my...hmm...I think I would rather not spell it out.

During the pandemic, I have consciously tried to shop in an eclectic mix of food retailers, often at odd times of day, to avoid people. That is a pretty doomed undertaking, given that shopping for essentials is one of the very few extra-curricular things any of us can do at the moment. I heard a rumour that Dunelm Mill was open for the sale of what my friend dubbed 'essential cushions' and sundry bits and bobs to accessorise your home, yet I feel sure that the chewing gum by the tills cannot magically have morphed them into a food retailer.

My repertoire of shops currently comprises (in loose order of importance): the Co-op convenience store round the corner (but not when neighborhood Covid case numbers suddenly spike, as they periodically do!), Lidl, surgical strikes on M & S near closing time to bag the yellow sticker items), Home Bargains, B & M, Farmfoods, and Sainsbury's (Christmas only). I may have to venture as far as Stoke soon to pick up my books from my accountant (a legally permitted work reason!), which would put me in the orbit of an Aldi, but we'll see.

Anyway, back to Farmfoods. What is Farmfoods, I hear most of the four of you say? I could call it 'the poor relation of Iceland', though that would be unfair, and not the outright paradox you might think. For ex-Mr Bonkers tells me that Iceland has really come on in recent years, and that their Italian-themed celebrity chef-fronted ready meals knock M & S out of the park! Farmfoods is a Birmingham-based Scottish chain - yes, another apparent contradiction there - of 300 stores, dominated by frozen products, but based on my own observation with 30-50% ambient goods too. The company's belief in frozen food is impressively sweeping:

"Our specialism is frozen food and we believe passionately that frozen food is the best solution for most family meals."

The store is very well (as in unkindly) lit - not the place you'd want to go on a bad hair or skin day, say. It is very sparsely attended by shoppers (which is good), and has a slightly sad atmosphere, not unlike Lidl in its early days here, but with the stock in serried ranks of refrigerated cabinets instead of big cardboard boxes - or 'outers' as they are known in the trade. If like me you need to be a thrifty shopper these days, I commend the store to you...for specific things, as with Home Bargains and B & M - and as with M & S in fact, but at the other end of the scale in fanciness terms.

Before moving on to the nub of the story, I will briefly mention Farmfoods' three for a quid offers on biscuits, including Fox's, a similar one on chick peas, and the delicious Mackie's honeycomb chocolate for something like 79p, not forgetting the staggeringly good offers on 48 eggs, should you ever need that quantity. They are usually kept just inside the door, where there is a very real risk some unsuspecting punter will step on them on their way in. Yes, there are truly legions of bargains besides these - though perhaps avoid their grapes, which may turn to moist mouldy mush before you reach your car - but as with that item-recalling bit at the end of The Generation Game my mind has gone blank beyond the ones I have mentioned. Oh, and of course the very subject of the post, Nicky Elite. Well, paper products generally are a bargain there - including my beloved kitchen roll, of which I need to have at least six rolls in or I start to feel nervous.

Ooh look, I mentioned them in that interview with Birgit of Olfactoria Travels I referenced in my last post, and back then I see it was only two rolls, which tells you everything you need to know about rising anxiety levels in a global pandemic.

Staying with my last post for a moment, in my answers to those questions I lamented the way in which manufacturers subtly tinker with the formulation of products, usually in an adverse direction. We have all experienced this to our collective chagrin with perfume, and it is going on in lots of other product categories these days, as companies try different ways of skinning a profit, as it were. One key arena for this de-specing is loo roll - or 'toilet tissue' as I should call it, but won't, as 'tissue' sounds so prissy in our scatological context. Yes, Andrex, the soft behemoth of my whole life till recently - apart from my early childhood, when the evil apology for greaseproof paper, Izal, was the order of the day, or as I say, latterly, though thankfully to a lesser extent - has changed. It has several variants...oh my goodness, more than I thought - or thought even possible!

Gentle Clean (with puppies on it - fortunately no canine tongue action is involved in the cleaning process)

Classic Clean (their 'bog standard' version)

Natural Pebble (with a touch of cotton and no pebbles)

Supreme Quilts (I shudder at the mention of quilts)

Skinkind (with 'Cleanripple' texture and 'soft soothe prebiotic lotion' - WTF?)

Touch of Care (with a touch of lavender 'for that spa-like feeling' - ?!!)

Right, so whatever happened to old Andrex? You know, the soft, thinnish style of paper with a slightly raised line top and bottom like a margin. I have only tried the top two variants: Gentle Clean is fairly soft in fairness, but I really don't want puppies, while Classic Clean is definitely too rough. Strangely, I don't believe any of the above products contain recycled fibres, which was my first thought to explain the roughness. I would be interested to know if you have any experience of these or the other varieties, which in my view have completely gratuitous and counterproductive bells and whistles.

Now I do have some professional experience of 'toilet tissue' manufacture (eek, it slipped out!), having done a job on combined heat and power systems, which are used by manufacturers with water-intensive processes like paper making and brewing. I visited factories all over the country with the requisite technical characteristics, but it is the toilet paper and beer ones I remember. One of the former was in Cumbria, and rejoiced in the name of Iggesund; one was near Sheffield, and one on Deeside. The makers of Andrex were in Kent as I recall, but my memory is fuzzy as to whether I went there too. But anyway, that was only about 1991(!), so thirty years ago, and diddly squat help to me here. I have come very close to writing to Andrex since I noticed the demise of the classic design with the lines top and bottom, but never quite felt moved enough. So here I am blogging about it instead.

Then in my quest to find an acceptable replacement, I haven't actually looked very far, so again, all tips gratefully received. I have tried Cushelle (too thick, not that soft really, plus I don't want koalas on it either!), and Nicky Elite, these being the two brands that most frequently pop up on forums such as Mumsnet. Nicky Elite has the benefit of being ridiculously cheap, while being on a par in roughness terms with Andrex Classic Clean, say, which even has a similar pattern of little perforations. Though imho Nicky is too thicky, like Cushelle.

Nicky, though, has an added fragrance, which I would normally avoid like the plague (sorry if that is a sore point just now), but which turns out to be the best bit of Nicky the toilet paper. For it is a wistful powdery scent that reminds me vividly of Floris Snow Rose (my review here), or some other retro Floris scent in that vein - Winter Rose, the alleged wedding perfume of The Queen? No, that was sharper on account of its carnation note, so I will stick with my Snow Rose comparison, sketchy as it may be.

I see that the brand Nicky belongs to the Sofidel Group, headquartered just outside Lucca, Italy, but with 17 plants in 12 countries worldwide, including two in the USA (Ohio and Oklahoma), so I have no idea where my 18 roll packet was made. Sofidel also make the Regina and Thirst Pockets brands of kitchen roll, a paper product category about the texture of which I am strangely relaxed by comparison, happy to buy both the useless cheapies that can't soak up a drop of spit and the luxuriously layered varieties that are so stiff they could double up as absorbent kitchen flooring.

But yes, the fragrance of Nicky Elite - another bizarre juxtaposition given our subject matter! ;) - is more fine than functional. Elite, even! Yes, I would go so far as to say that Nicky Elite is almost more functional as a fine fragrance than a loo roll, hehe. And given that they discontinued Snow Rose a while back, I can't be quite sure it is that perfume Nicky reminds me of, but even if it is a false memory it is a good one.

Have you found the perfect loo roll? Have you braved the texture of recycled, perhaps?

And if you have tried Nicky Elite, do you think the scent is like a wistful whiff of something by Floris?

(Photo of a tottering pile of Nicky Elite I spotted in Home Bargains yesterday, but you can even buy them in Ocado! Farmfoods logo by Xeepo via Wikimedia Commons, Snow Rose photo via Flickr.)

 

Taking stock: an off the wall quiz for off the wall times

About a month ago, the lead singer of The Monochrome Set took part in an interview for Paris-based Le Village Pop, which describes itself as "International web radio focused on music, cinema and artists' words". VIPop, as it is also known, is noted for its podcasts, which aim to "discover an artist from a different perspective...An elegant mix of music and words of a musician (pop, rock, folk, soul, etc...)."

The entertaining half hour podcast is a medley of Monochrome Set songs interspersed with tracks from other bands, and with Bid's answers to a most original set of questions. For their part, the Village Pop team were delighted with his responses:

"He is the one who answered our questions and he wins to this day the Grand Prix for the most laconic answers among all the episodes of the VIPop Collection!...This band is definitely not like the others...And we love it!"

I can thoroughly recommend the original podcast HERE for Bid's amusing and quirky answers alone, even if you are not a fan of the music as such.

Now...the New Year is generally a time for taking stock and looking back on the year gone by, making resolutions etc, and never more so than in 2021 after the white knuckle ride we've just had in 2020. Many of us not working on the front line - or working at all in my case! - have had ample opportunity to re-evaluate our lifestyles and relationships during the isolation of lockdown.

I love this reader comment quoted in a blog post by Mark Manson on the impact of the pandemic, entitled: "You Only Know Who You Are When Everything Is Taken From You". In it the commenter observes that the pandemic "brought out the 'factory default settings' of everyone. The paranoid became more paranoid. The needy became more needy. The anxious became more anxious and the optimistic became more optimistic".

Like a lot of people, I have been doing a lot of navel gazing over the past year, and this quiz appealed to me as the questions were so unusual. I have taken part in a few interviews in the blogosphere, for example this one on Olfactoria's Travels from way back in 2013, as part of her series "People in Perfumeland". Looking back, Birgit's questions were also a bit different!

So as this is the time of year for ponderings, I thought I would have a go at answering the Village Pop questionnaire myself...As a market researcher, I am usually the one wielding the clip board, so it is fun to be answering rather than asking the questions. I do hope the Village Pop team don't mind my taking this liberty - or 'liberté', even! (I have messaged them to ask for their permission, and will obviously take down the post if need be.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 1) Growing up, what virtue did you see in your parents that you hope to emulate?

Finding a redeeming aspect in even the most depressing situations. [My mother's special knack. Case in point: a holiday in Crete where there was more rainfall that week than at any time since 1923. Marooned in our hotel, Mother remarked cheerily on how much the plants must be enjoying a drink.]

2) What poem or song really moves you? Can you share a line from it?

Louis MacNeice's Snow:

World is crazier and more of it than we think,

Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion

A tangerine and spit the pips and feel

The drunkenness of things being various.

3) When have you recently felt overwhelmed? Describe the situation?

Lying awake night after night for four months listening to a mysterious hum / whirring from next door. The noise has gone now, but I appear to have encoded the memory in the form of tinnitus. That was overwhelming initially too(!), but am gradually learning to live with it.

4) What's the best bargain you've ever found?

A black Kookai jacket in a vintage shop in Berlin, for 8 euros. It is not so much the price in itself that was a bargain, but the truly incredible amount of wear I got out of it! It has finally been retired, due to extreme fading and a large reddish patch on one arm; it had got to the point where the jacket could only be worn during the hours of darkness - a limiting factor for at least half the year. ;)

5) If you were assured you wouldn't fail what would you attempt to do?

Write a book and try to get it published.

6) Has your heart ever lied to you, or do you think it always tells the truth? Can you

explain?

My heart doesn't lie as such, but it can be error prone and is much given to paranoia and catastrophising. [Case in point: when the sample from my routine blood test was rejected by the lab yesterday, I instantly assumed there was something wrong with my blood. Further research suggests there is a 2% chance this is in fact the reason, as opposed to a glitch during the administering of the test itself, but me being me I went straight for the more worrying possibility! NB If it was my blood, I will be sure to come back and tell you.]

7) When do you feel insecure?

Oh, on more occasions than you can shake a stick at, haha... Finding unexplained scratches on my car (a disconcertingly frequent occurrence); looking in the mirror, especially barefaced; lurking at parties where I hardly know anyone; tackling DIY projects, and problems with phones, wifi and computers, all of which are outside my sphere of competence. Oh, and cooking meat, which - like Alsatians - sniffs fear in the fryer.

8) What is unforgivable?

The insidious downspec-ing of trusted household brands, eg Andrex and Fray Bentos.

9) What paradox or contradiction in life have you had to learn to accept or embrace?

That everything you buy in T K Maxx, intending to give it as a gift, comes with a price tag that is impossible to peel off.

10) If you could change one thing about the culture you live in, what would it be and why?

The pressure on women not to age, as though it were a kind of failure, like death to Christian Scientists.

11) Is it better to love or to be loved? Why?

Both matter: as a baby you need to be loved by your primary caregiver to avoid attachment issues in later life. For as with donning oxygen masks in an in-flight emergency, it is important to love yourself first before loving others. I would also observe that unrequited love can be exquisitely painful and ultimately unsatisfactory for the sufferer.

12) Is there a family tradition that has a special meaning to you? Can you describe it?

Clean sheets on Christmas Eve.

13) What advice can you give about how to conquer fear?

That the thing you fear is rarely as scary when you finally screw your courage to the sticking place and get stuck in. With the notable exception of rock climbing if you are only 5' 3".

14) Is there one thing you know for sure?

I will continue to spill tea on pale carpets.

15) If you could bring one person back from the dead who would it be and why?

My mother, because she was simply lovely in every way, and I never got to say goodbye.

16) How would you define freedom?

Going on a 'living room crawl' of local friends' houses.

17) What do you recommend to overcome self pity?

Watching a 'forensic detectives'-type programme, and thanking my lucky stars I wasn't murdered in a horrible way and my body dumped in a wood when I was only 19.

18) In what area of your life are you immature?

I am diffident and mealy-mouthed when complaining, though less so than I used to be.

19) What is your greatest achievement?

Such things are hard to quantify...arguably being subjected to a violent assault by a stranger in a park on a Sunday afternoon, and doing an A-Level exam the next morning. Also up there was getting compensation out of Ryanair - years before making claims for flight delays were 'a thing' people knew they could do. I had to escalate my case all the way to a director at the CAA before Ryanair coughed up, but they did - in full, bar the cost of a beer to soothe my frazzled nerves on Day 3 of the flight delay. I guess they felt the need to retain a little bit of control...I am proud to say that a local business travel agent used my complaint letter as a template for years afterwards. 

20) If you could take back something you've said what would it be?

Telling an examiner in my university finals that I enjoyed the dark humour in the works of Samuel Beckett, despite his "bottomless contempt for the human condition" and jibes at the marginalised and disadvantaged...before discovering on shaking the examiner's hand that he only had three fingers.

21) When do you feel sad what do you do to find comfort?

I knit furiously, burn incense, and occasionally wallow in Stina Nordenstam records. In extreme cases, I go to bed and write the day off, as (another maternal truism) things often look better in the morning.

22) What do you dream about most often? How do you interpret your dream?

My dreams are insanely varied, and invariably bad. I'd rather not try to interpret them, but be grateful they were only dreams.

23) Is there one question you're asking yourself these days?

Will life really return to normal?

(Photo of La Pensadora via AWa, Wikimedia Commons)

Going solo: a festive Christmas first, plus an Hermessence Ambre Narguile epiphany

I am sadly of the age now where I don't fall over, but have a fall...Yesterday, while out on a gloriously sunny and snowy, but perilously slippery, walk - note that I didn't manage to stop my falls, but caught myself in time from saying 'slippy' - I had three falls: two on ice, and one attempting to jump a stream. I boasted on Facebook that I had 'fallen well' (by putting out my hand each time I went down). Alas, a sleepless night with a limp hand suggests I may have spoken too soon. And meanwhile, I have also gone and broken one of my New Year's Resolutions - not to keep going on about my ailments(!). Too bad, not least because it isn't even the first time in 2021...I saw the New Year in with a 24 hour migraine, and when I showed up in my ghostly half recovered state to a Zoom call on New Year's Day, immediately felt the need to tell my friends how I was feeling. Never mind, there's still the 'be less timid around meat' and 're-learn how to sleep' resolutions to go at. The sleep project may actually merit a post of its own, along with the one on my new brace of supplements at some point, as I am trying everything under the sun to coax the long lost art of feeling sleepy back into my incorrigibly wired brain.

I also want to say that despite the falls, I have been so 'radicalised' by Val the Cookie Queen about the benefits of exercise that I don't remotely regret venturing out in icy conditions and comprehensively coming a cropper.

But back to Christmas...according to the news, some 8 million households spent it on their own this year, including me in the end. This was the natural consequence - I nearly said 'fall out', but we have had enough falls already - of the mixing restrictions, prompting families and friends alike to bubble up in smaller combinations, in a bid to keep the 'indoor breathing entities' to a manageable level. Very occasionally have I spent large parts of Christmas alone in the past - there was that other migraine(!) in 2012 I mentioned in my last post, also a long drive from Edinburgh to Swindon in 1996 - but this was my first ever 'festive meal for one'. I approached it with mild curiosity rather than any sense of being 'Billy-no-mates', knowing that perversely, the nation is presently united in its very isolation.

To my surprise, this special day, traditionally so loaded with high expectations, felt eerily calm and satisfactory, in part due to the endorphins of another sunny walk with my cat-feeding friend, M - our route was positively glittering with frosty wonders. A highlight was a man wearing an inflatable Santa suit jogging at full tilt while pushing an elderly lady in a wheelchair. On our return, M gave me some homemade mince pies and I gave her a bunch of grapes to accessorise her sister's cheeseboard, where she was headed next. She knocked on my door again that night bearing a Tupperware of treacle glazed ham(!). I reciprocated with some titbits for her cat. Then Truffle and I sat down to watch 'Call the Midwife'. She didn't like the noisy cries of the newborns, while I didn't like the cutting of the cords and the bloody slime on their heads, so we both looked away rather a lot.

Oh, and ex-Mr Bonkers turned up unexpectedly in the middle of the day en route to his own Christmas pairing, bearing a tiny chocolate Santa. He swore it looked "substantially" bigger on the Tesco website.

Of note this year is that I received SIX gin bottles - including three red fruit ones, a classic 'see through' variety, a light fashioned from a gin bottle, and a non-alcoholic gin fronted by a squirrel.

I missed the Queen's speech while peeling sprouts, but caught it (and the alternative one doing the rounds!) later. Her Majesty put in a word for lone diners, which was nice. One good thing about the day was being able to microwave my dinner endless times - I have a completely ludicrous and OCD love of piping hot food that can only be indulged at home - another was a hilarious skit about Laura Kuenssberg on the Dead Ringers Christmas Special, which I heartily recommend if you can find it on iPlayer. I did go with a chicken on the day - try as I might, I can't seem to f*** up roasting one.

Mid-way through my meal, I asked Alexa if she was having a good Christmas. 

"Terrific, thanks", she replied without hesitation. "Especially as I am spending it with you."

Then I asked her if she would like a glass of Prosecco.

"I don't have an opinion on that." Her loss!

As I thought, the year has been so strange and separate for so many people that a Christmas in similar vein could feel almost normal, and so it proved. Did anyone else go it alone this year?

Fast forward a week to my 'Tier 4 headache' on New Year's Eve. Given the constant barrage of fireworks from 6pm to 1am, the Beirut-like bangs would have been enough to make anyone's head hurt. ;) Not a patch on a Dutch firework display, mind! (Hamamelis has already read this post about her compatriots' warzone-style New Year celebrations - 'Before Covid', I mean - but I include it here for anyone else who is curious, and wasn't reading the blog ten years ago almost to the day!)

And now...on to the perfume part. On Christmas Eve I was auditioning Hermes samples to choose one to give to a friend - I went with Santal Massoia in the end. But along the way I tried Ambre Narguile (sorry about the lack of accent, but it comes up in a weird font in the current incarnation of Blogger, so will have to pass), and it was love at first sniff. I was sure I didn't care for it, but had almost certainly confused it with Ambre Sultan, and assumed it had a herbal facet. Instead, it was this enveloping ambery gourmand concoction, which I will leave it to Victoria of Bois de Jasmin to describe. Yet again, I am drawn to another of her 'four star' winners, whilst lacking her knack of parsing its foody delights.

"Sheer layers of smoke swirling over a honeyed undercurrent set the stage for the sensation of dark richness, which very much reminds me of cutting into a caramel cake and watching the burned sugar redolent cream drip slowly from the edge. It pairs the dark translucence of honey seeping through the tobacco leaf with a fruity note that lies between a brandied cherry and a baked apple."

Notes (also from BDJ):  labdanum, benzoin, vanilla, tonka beans, roasted sesame seeds, cinnamon, coumarin, orchid.

I was so taken with Ambre Narguile that I wore it on Christmas Day too, and reckon it will become a winter staple, as long as my long vial lasts.

On a side note, here is an excerpt from a post on the relative sizes of manufacturer samples, and an explanation of how I will have acquired this one:

"....at the other end of the scale there are still some houses which are generous - perhaps too generous - with their samples.  Take Hermès, for example, who give out 4ml samples in long glass-stoppered vials slipped into those distinctive orange card cases.  Hermès has to be the most forthcoming with samples of all the luxury brands I know, and I am borderline ashamed of the times I have sauntered in (invariably wearing my good, sample scoring coat or its summer frock equivalent, depending on the season), spun some line about a friend / husband / relative with an upcoming birthday / wedding / anniversary, and walked out with not one but two of the 4ml vials.  For two fit better into the card case than one - one just rattles around, quite frankly - so the SA usually cracks and sticks two in there, one for me and one for my imaginary friend.  In my defence, I have genuinely given away a number of the Hermès samples I have procured using various ruses - my old English teacher did wear Vetiver Tonka at her wedding (er...the sample, not a full bottle) - but I cannot pretend not to have squirrelled away a few vials for my own nefarious use.  Though some of the ones pictured above were gifts to me by friends and relations on similar morally questionable foraging missions."

So here we are...2021...it can't be worse than 2020, surely? It had better not be, is all I can say!

It remains to wish a HAPPY NEW YEAR to readers old and new. Whatever awfulness goes down in the coming year, perfume will always be part of the answer...

Have Yourself a Funny Little Christmas!

Well, I promised I would return to a perfume theme in this post, after my woolly digression in the last one. I will be honest and say I am not really in the mood for writing a pure perfume post right now, as I am feeling a bit 'overwhelmed' by the prevailing existential angst and global gloom, which is regularly given a brutal fillip by the abrupt twists and turns, volte-faces (is that a plural? ;) ), and generalised rug pulling of our country's Covid strategy. I know it is a fast moving situation requiring a 'dynamic response', but the constant raising and dashing of expectations throughout the year is proving hard to absorb psychologically. So I will return to those themes I had planned when I am feeling 'more the thing', as my friend Lizzie is wont to say. I am also taking a variety of new supplements, and the promising early results of those may also spawn a future post, albeit one under the wider heading of skincare / health...

That all said, I will mention a few scent-related aspects of this year's festive season: for example, I have quite randomly rediscovered Ava Luxe's Love's True Bluish Light, and am finding its milky-amber-vanilla vibe most soothing. I fancy Undina might like this one too, if she doesn't already know it, due to its crossover with Jo Malone's Sweet Milk. 

I have also dug out my little decant of SL Fille en Aiguilles, with the specific intention of spraying my wooden Christmas tree ornament with it. I ended up on the receiving end of some collateral spritzing(!), and actually enjoyed the scent on me more than I would have imagined. I had previously dismissed pine out of hand as a note solely reminiscent of janitorial products, which I realise is very 'short-nosed' of me.

I am a big fan of joss sticks and burn incense year round. It does feel especially fitting at Christmas. My absolute favourite is nag champa, and not any nag champa either - Goloka, with its distinctive yellow and orange box.  Great for anyone who needs to make up the value of an Amazon order to qualify for free delivery. Assuming you don't eschew Amazon for being an evil behemoth, which I totally respect, even as I remain stubbornly pragmatic.

For any UK-based readers, I don't know if your Christmas plans have changed in the light of the new Tier rules that nobbled London and some of the South East yesterday; the effect in my town was not as drastic as to ban all household mixing, but you can now only see up to two other households on Christmas Day itself, instead of spread over five days. I get why they are doing it, though it will make catching up with friends more logistically tricky over the holidays. Basically we are back to outdoor one-on-one meetings, typically based around a walk, not least to keep warm!

I may end up celebrating on my own, which I have never done before, except for the first Christmas in this house, when I had a migraine and spent the day in bed. Even so, I rallied by the evening and ventured out to a friend's, who rustled me up a plated supper in front of Call the Midwife. If that is the outcome, it will be novel and interesting at least, and there may yet be fellow waifs and strays who come forward to suggest forming a festive bubble. This year has been so comprehensively strange that it almost seems appropriate for the big day itself to be a bit of a departure from the norm! 

Then I have a truly minuscule turkey crown in the freezer, which I bought intending to use to practise on ahead of the date, as I haven't interacted with frozen fowl before, but never got round to it. I will either brave the unknown, hehe, or buy a tried and tested chicken at the last minute instead. 

Truffle will be here, obviously. She is still not bringing in any prey for the Derbyshire Uni survey, the second month's lot of stats for which I am due to upload shortly. Another big fat zero hunting tally is my prediction. Truffle is currently in the doghouse - or cathouse, should that be? - after savaging a wrist warmer that had taken me all day to make and sew up. I was on Facebook, busy defending myself against a sudden outburst of 'microwavable rice shaming', and she clearly targeted that item as 'the last thing I had shown a keen interest in that wasn't her', and set about chewing it with gusto. Unfortunately the glove is beyond repair, but I have just enough wool to start the pair all over again. Up until now, Truffle has only shown an interest in balls of wool - never the finished product that incorporates all those hours of labour! - so this is a worrying development. I mention the cat's presence, for in the light of this delinquent behaviour I feel she may have forfeited her right to the usual festive morsels. By the same token, I reserve the right to relent nearer the time. ;)

To match the turkey, here is a photo of my equally tiny Christmas tree. I put it up on 5th December, which is completely out of character, having been brought up to resist the urge to decorate the house until Christmas Eve (blame Nancy Mitford, hehe). However, something about the pandemic has prompted people to bring that ritual well forward - even into November - so 5th December turned out to be almost fashionably late in our street. I guess whatever else is going on in the world, pretty lights never lose their ability to excite and delight, and so it is with me.

I think that for many, the holiday period - truncated and weird as all get-out though it may be - will be a time of reflection and taking stock. I recently came across this photograph of a gig in Barcelona from a few years back - the first one I have ever watched entirely from behind(!). The contrast between this scene and the masked and socially distanced world we live in now couldn't be more stark. I hope the 'old normal' - or something loosely approximating to it - will return one day, but I am not 100% convinced.

As well as knitting - and soon to be re-knitting, hehe - I have been enjoying reading lately. My current book is Mrs Bridge by Evan S Connell, a superbly understated study of a 1950s housewife's life in America. If you like the little period touches in The Queen's Gambit, this might well appeal. There are some priceless lines, such as this comment about Mrs Bridge's husband Walter:

"For a while after their marriage she was in such demand that it was not unpleasant when he fell asleep."

After I have finished this I am spoilt for choice, with several tottering tsundokus in the living room to dive into. For I am as much of a compulsive book buyer as I am of wool - and used to be of perfume. However, I promised my English teacher (with whom I am still in touch!) that I would read The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton, which I bought when it first came out. Just checked - the print is not too small, which often puts me off tackling books.

Then does anyone else do that thing where you buy yourself presents and put them under the tree unwrapped? I have got into the habit of doing this, and this year so far have bought myself a calendar, a diary - okay, they technically count as 'office essentials' - some socks, a little pottery bowl with a bottle of gin and a cat on it(!), and a bicycle pump.

So I think that is all for now - for those who are celebrating I would be interested to know whether you buy yourself presents on top of the ones you receive from family and friends, and also, crucially, how different your Christmas will be this year...